It was hard work yesterday seeing our government all but give up on Covid Zero and I have empathy for them and for all of us in the now not so “smug hermit kingdom”.
And then I wake up to see that Facebook, Instagram and What’s App are down. Oh no!
This morning I also got a call from my surgeon who confirmed that the lesion on my tonsillar pillar is cancer. (That wasn’t the hard bit.) “You knew,” he said. Yes, I did know. I feared it before I saw him and knew it for sure afterwards.
But it was hard work hearing that HE didn’t know about the max fax nurse mentioning a two for one surgery the same day as I saw him because he had not communicated with them. All the discussion happens on a Friday at the multidisciplinary team meeting and I KNEW that but didn’t quite take it in.
The good news is that a patch in my right cheek which was going to be biopsied during my max fax surgery is just inflammation. But that worrying sore bit must have been what the nurse meant when she mentioned the two for one surgery would go ahead under Level 3. I did try to explain to her but I obviously failed to make myself clear.
So all depends on the scan tomorrow and the MDM on Friday. The conversation with the surgeon was not cheering although he did say, “We’ll sort you out.” He seemed to be focusing on the fact it was cancer, something I already knew as mentioned above. All he could tell me was that it was a moderately differentiated squamous cell carcinoma.
I’m a little bit embarrassed about my assumption, I suppose I feel disappointed but I’m still curiously calm and hopeful. I feel well, my throat is not too sore and I certainly haven’t lost any weight as I did before the previous cancers. Previous waiting periods before results have been marked by a deep existential pain under a stoic exterior. I don’t feel like that now.
“Low lying existential dread” is how some have described the feelings of people living through the pandemic. I think that means a fear for oneself and the world or your country as a whole. I do feel a bit of that but as long as there’s a plan to rid me of the cancer I might avoid that particular cancer-related grief.
And Facebook is back up so all is not lost.
